I was uploading Head In The Game yesterday and, upon listening to the mp3, I decided there were a couple of places the drums could be improved. So I tightened them up. No, I will not tell you whereabouts in the song it was.

Notes:

I remember this coming together musically very quickly out of a jam session shortly after we bought the Korg M1, but although we had the lyrics shortly afterwards, I never tried putting them together until a couple of years ago.

Lyrics:

You're going for the high score in your artificial landscapeConflict with the secret code of honor of machinesAccumulating hit points with a ruthless manic fervorSlipping past the traps and pitfalls pictured on the screen

Don't you realize, there isn't an escape keyYou can’t expect to exit without feeling any painActivating laser beams to edit out your problemGain an extra life and stay ahead in the game

Gambling on your past performance, dicing up your chancesproposing winning gambits but your deck is always stackedDealing false alternatives, and aceing their decisionsYou know the turning card will be the Joker in the pack

Don't you realize, that there isn't an escape keyYou can't expect to exit without feeling any painThe dealer hits you with a card to edit out your problem Counting on the river puts your head in the game

All I did was get a replay All I did was play the game Thought I'd figured out the answers But somehow all the rules had changed

You're Rolling up your characters and challenging the circleHiding from your conscience in a world of mystic themespassing off as casual friends subverted to your serviceescaping intact from the danger vivid in your dreams

Don't you realize, that there isn't an escape keyYou can't expect to exit without feeling any painCasting double sixes to edit out your problemMultiply the bounty on your head in the game

Don't you realize there isn't any futureHiding in your habit where no-one can point the blameRocket jumps and bunny hops will beat the low-ping bastardReal life re-targets on your head in the game

Featuring:

I've finished the Telecaster tracks on GodProg:Enlightenment, and moved on to :Omnipotence.

There's something about the Telecaster... it just sounds so great. In some ways it is sad to replace the existing tracks, which feature the Ibanez 540s, my old faithful. But it's all about the tone, and the Telecaster's got it.

The end of the track has a solo in some freaking strange time signature, reminiscent of Siberian Khatru but I don't care.

The GodProg suite is slated for Album#2 so technically I'm not supposed to be working on this yet. But the only way I've found to keep moving forward is to follow the muse.

OK, So this year I got a craving for one of these, and I don't know why. Perhaps it was retroactive craving, because now that I have one, I'm loving it and wouldn't want to do without it. I've used it on every track I've worked on since it arrived, bullying its way into the studio and pushing the other electric guitars aside.

I have replaced the tuners with Steinberg Gearless ones, partly because I've always wanted to try them, and partly because the stock tuners were probably the weakest component out of the box. Tuning the guitar up didn't feel as solid and reliable as I felt it should be. Also - the black tuners are sexier than the old chrome ones.

Notes - December 2005:

Cloud Chamber is the first completed track of a suite of instrumentals, a side-project which I have tentatively dubbed "Maxwell Tangent's Divergent Thinking". Musically it's ambient, techno, loop-based instrumental music with plenty of guitars and processed natural sounds. But it's early days, it could end up going in a different direction. I hope to have each track segue seamlessly into the next one in order to make one long piece of music. So far the tracks are being written in reverse order, because Cloud Chamber is the final movement.

I was working on this track on the later half of 2001, and therefore I've dedicated it to the victims of the World Trade Center attack in September 2001.